Minnesota

1. We noticed that, on October 14, you changed your deaths reporting. We want to make sure we understand it—are the following understandings of the fields reported on your dashboard correct? “Deaths from confirmed cases (cumulative)” - any death in someone with a positive PCR test AND either autopsy evidence of COVID-19 infection or COVID-19 on the death certificate “Deaths from probable cases (cumulative)” - any death in someone with a positive antigen test AND either autopsy evidence of COVID-19 infection or COVID-19 on the death certificate “Total non-laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 deaths (death certificate) (cumulative)” - any death in someone with no laboratory evidence of COVID-19 but COVID-19 on the death certificate

Yes, the three definitions as you’ve described them are correct.

Is the “total non-laboratory confirmed COVID-19 deaths (death certificate) (cumulative)” number included in “Total deaths (cumulative)“? The formatting makes it appear that way, but it seems not to be.

No, “Total non-laboratory confirmed COVID-19 deaths (death certificate) (cumulative)” are not included in the “Total deaths (cumulative),” as you suspected.

Is the “Deaths among cases that resided in long-term care or assisted living facilities (cumulative)” figure included in the “Total deaths (cumulative)” count?

Yes, the “Deaths among cases that resided in long-term care or assisted living facilities (cumulative)” are included in “Total deaths (cumulative).”

3. We noticed that on October 14, the “Total deaths (cumulative)” figure dropped by 24 deaths. Is this because when this “death certificate” field was called “probable deaths,” before October 14, it was included in “Total deaths (cumulative)“?

We checked with our death data experts and, based on our records, we do not observe a drop in 24 deaths on 10/14. What we do see is that we moved 6 cases from probable to confirmed on that day.

Pending follow up from colleague.

MN reached out to us.

We appreciate the data update that you have done – and all the work you do to gather data from across all the states.   I wanted to note that Minnesota reports testing on the encounter level, not the specimen level. We would like to request that you make the change when you update Minnesota status.   We understand that the language on our website may not make that clear, and we are working on updating our language to note that people who have multiple specimens tested in one day are only counted once in the specimen-level testing reported.   Thank you again, for the work you are doing.